Too Much Information? No Such Thing

The other day I accidentally got into some poison oak. When it comes to poison oak there are only two types of people - those who are allergic and those who will be allergic. Turns out that some 15 percent of the population begin life immune to its effects but repeated exposure fixes that. Contrary to what you might think, you actually become more, not less sensitive to poison oak (or ivy) over time and exposure.

But last year I didn't know that. And having been "immune" my entire life, I thought nothing of working all weekend in a giant patch of the stuff until most of my body suddenly decided to react to it. It was so bad I call that time the "lost week" of 2008.

Anyway, faced with the grim prospect of another lost week, I did some Google searching yesterday and found that if you run hot water - as hot as you can stand - over the affected areas for a few minutes, your cells release their stored-up histamines, providing 6 to 8 hours of complete relief. It's miraculous! I'm sitting here right now without an itch -- and no drugs.

That's just one example, but I can rattle off a long list of circumstances - related primarily to the medical, legal, and construction professions, among others - where the extreme wealth of information we call the Internet has changed my families lives and, in one case, just about saved one.
Of course there's communications, ecommerce, entertainment, education, news, and business, but the biggest impact of the information age on the Tobak family has been in areas where, until recently, those we used to call professionals - doctors and lawyers - had a lock on all the knowledge. And frankly, that just wasn't good enough.

As some of you know, I spent my career in the tech industry, so chips, computers, and communications are as much a part of me as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And yes, I have a Twitter account, but I primarily use it to get my blog out there. I'm on Facebook, but I'm not sure why. And I'm LinkedIn, but I wish I wasn't.

I worked on computers since before they were personal, I've had dozens of laptops dating back to Compaq's 1986 Portable II that weighed about 30 pounds, and I've had cell phones since they were just car phones. But I'll tell you a secret: I don't play video games, I don't own a Blackberry, an iPhone or any other kind of smartphone, and I'm not one of those people who thumb their way through life with the attention span of a hummingbird.

But too much information? There's no such thing. Now all we need is better search technology to find it all.

So, has the information age impacted your life in unexpected ways?